Impossible to get nearly decent results

[ziobiagio]

I’ve tried everything; I can’t get a decent conversion, every color looks odd, and there’s a lot of digital noise. This is not happening at all with the Silverfast conversion.

My workflow is to run the Silverfast prep tool from File, then I read the metadata, then auto wb because the Plustek scanner doesn’t leave a border to sample from, and then I click on convert negatives.

This is the result with multiples roll scanned.
Also after doing couple of tries my files are like half the size and lost details and now i’m pretty sure i’ve to rescan all the pictures…

I scan as DNG HDR 48 bit raw.

[Paul74]

Don’t do auto WB. Try to convert without setting the WB. That works for me. Also, you can try to move the negatives a little bit in the holder when you are scanning. Scan one frame with a little bit of unexposed film. Set there the WB in Lightroom and copy the settings to the other photos of the roll

[ziobiagio]

I’ve tried this way it’s still pretty bad

I also tried without reading the metadata and with the metadata, still absurd tints and white balances.

[ziobiagio]

In this case i let nlp wb the image, still poor results.

[ziobiagio]

This is the silverfast converted tiff, straight from the scanner

[cvandebroek]

Any chance you could share one RAW file for us to have a look to it?

[ziobiagio]

I cannot load *.dng files here i can export in *.jpeg the negative if you want

[cvandebroek]

That doesn’t help, really…
The RAW file would be best. You could use WeTransfer to make it available.

Also, does the RAW scan have the border available for WB? The JPG does not.

[ziobiagio]

I will load it in a few hours when I’ll back from work. Most likely they do not have borders or only a little bit, the scanner I’m using is a Plustek 8300i.

[ziobiagio]

Ok, here’s the link to 3 negatives, i scan one of them with that border in excess.

Immagine (12).dng

[nuno]

Is there a way to increase the amount of light that Plustek 8300i uses? The border looks really really dark.

[ziobiagio]

I’m unsure but i guess when you scan hdr raw it doesn’t allow you to modify anything.
Do you think it’s a scanner problem?

[nuno]

Compare to how I scan, I never seen such a dark border before. And then after I convert your files I see so much noise that I can’t help but think that the scanner is underexposing. This is just speculation from observation of the files you shared.

Do you have Vuescan? As far as a I remember one can customize a lot in that software, not sure if you can push the scanner to overexpose in SF.

[nuno]

Why don’t you use the files out of SF since they look so much better though?

[Harry]

Pretty sure that’s normal for a RAW dng, as you say the point is that the Plustek and its software isn’t doing anything to the file.

[cvandebroek]

These negatives very much look like they’re broken. I pushed expose pre-NLP-conversion and the results look “somewhat” better already. But definitely there’s information missing in the negs, likely from a lack of light during the scan process.

I’m not familiar with Silverfast, but should be fixable given SF can convert the photos.

– Chris

[or64]

Hello, I also loaded your files down and tried to convert in nlp, which delivers bad files like yours. Then I used another converter which usually delivers worse results. In this case they look more “usable” than NLP but still not good. Here you can load them down : https://we.tl/t-cvaEAuz5ey
When I look at your files, I think something is wrong with them. They are very grainy, strange color and look like (in the scan-process) underexposed. When I read, you use HDR scanning, i would recommend at first to stop that and scan “stupid” straight 16 bit look what happens.
Another try could be to scan them with your camera.
Good luck!